Hammerstone

“ We doubt seriously if hammerstones of this type were manufactured as such, but rather we assume any suitable core, rejected scraper plane, or chopper could have served as a starting point, and an over-all examination of our specimens supports such a thesis.
Emergent is the correlation of core hammerstones and the presence of manos and metates. Noteably both these grinding elements are rare in the coastal San Dieguito and in the Lake Mohave area but do occur among the Shoshonean and Yuman groups who occupied the areas corresponding to these ancient lithic cultures. ”

“ Mr. Owen says such objects were used in pecking pestles, mortars, and similar implements into shape. Fig. 43 illustrates one of these hammerstones, found on the surface at Kennewick. It is a part of a pebble of tough dark blue material, apparently glassy basalt. One side edge and one end have been chipped and show large scars on each side of the side edge and several on one side of the top. Near the middle of one side, and opposite it on the other side edge, there are signs of pecking which suggest an attempt at grooving. ”

“ Towards the end of the heathen period we find instead of the axe a symbolical hammer, alike on both sides of the eye. The fact that in Scandinavia the sun god's axe became a hammer can be explained, if we consider the original Scandinavian word hamarr. This word signified originally stone, and was thus a natural term for the weapon of the sun god or the thunder god, so long as this weapon was thought of as a thunderbolt of stone. Later on, when the word had acquired its present meaning of hammer, it was just as natural for people to imagine Thor's weapon to be an iron hammer. ”

“ It does not appear to have been used as a hammer. Mr. James Wyatt, F.G.S., had a piece of close-grained grit, in shape somewhat like a thick axe-head, 41/2 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 3 inches thick, with four concave depressions, one on each face and side, found at Kempston Road, near Bedford. What purpose these hollows fulfilled, it is difficult to guess. The stones in which they occur may, however, have been used as anvils or mortars on which to hammer or pound; or the cavities may have served to steady objects of bone, stone, or wood in the process of manufacture. ”

“ Axes with or without handles are carved on stones forming the walls and roofs of tombs of this period. The image of a man, or rather of a god, with an axe, may be seen on the wall of one of the caves that in Champagne are hewn out of the chalk-rock (Fig. 15) , and from the time that Gaul was a Roman province we have many reproductions of a god holding in his hand a hammer with a long handle (Fig. 16) . The hammer, symmetrical like the double-edged axe, strongly resembles the hammer of the northern Thor, but the handle is so long that it reaches the ground. ”

“ Closely allied to the axe-hammers, so closely indeed that the forms seem to merge in each other, are the perforated hammer-heads of stone, which are found of various shapes, and are formed of several different kinds of rocks. In many instances, the whole of the external surface has been carefully fashioned and ground into shape, but it is at least as commonly the case that a symmetrical oval pebble has been selected for the hammer-head, and has been thus used without any labour being bestowed upon it, beyond that necessary for boring the shaft-hole. ”

“ This superstition cannot, however, have been general at the time when man himself made and used these stone axes; but must have been a subsequent idea, which, to judge from the peculiar occurrence of hatchet-shaped objects in the bogs and grave finds, doubtless had its origin in the faft that the axe and the hammer were, in the Stone Age, sacred to the mighty divinity of thunder and lightning, who not only inspired terror, but greatly contributed to the increase of the fertility of the earth. ”

“ A stone hammer found at Claycrop, Kirkinner, [5] Wigtownshire, is by the courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shown in Fig. 145a. In form, it is very like Fig. 136a from Wick, but blunter at the edge.
The instrument shown in Fig. 146 is perhaps more like a blunted axe-hammer than a simple hammer. It has at one end a much-rounded point, and at the other is nearly straight across, though rounded in the other direction. It would appear to be a weapon rather than a tool. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that even before the age of metals the neolithic artificers of western Europe could not only cut and bore, but also ornament with patterns, stone hammer-heads of the most intractable materials, with the aid only of pieces of wood twirled or rubbed on the place and plentifully fed with sand and water. The stone axe- and hammer-heads so common in pre-historic collections were bored with tubular drills, made probably from reeds, which cut out a solid core. ”

“ Axe-hammers.​—​The perforated axe-hammers show an advance in the manufacture of stone implements.200 Of these there are several varieties; some, and probably the earliest, are of the celt type; others are blunt at both ends forming true hammers; but the latter type come near to the modern axe-head in shape. They are well-designed, highly polished, and formed of stone selected for its hardness. The spot for the hole seems to have been first chipped; and the perforation was then made by rotatory friction with a suitable stone, piece of bone or wood, and the use of sand and water. ”

“ If, however, the stone hammers came to hand ready made, they might claim a preference. For heavy work, where iron was scarce, large mauls, such as those shortly to be described, might have been in use rather than iron sledges; but the more usual form of stone hammer would probably be a pebble held in the hand, as is constantly the case with the workers in iron of Southern Africa. Even in Peru and Bolivia, the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., informed me that the masons skilful in working hard stone with steel chisels, make use of no other mallet or hammer than a stone pebble held in the hand. ”

“ The axe-head is said to be formed of some kind of ironstone, and is 5 inches long. The hole is described as neatly drilled. A weapon of the same kind (31/2 inches) blunter at the ends and described as a hammer, was found with a deer's-horn hammer, and a bronze knife in a barrow at Lambourn, Berks. [11] A small black stone axe-head of nearly similar form was found near the head of a contracted skeleton at a depth of 12 feet in a barrow in Rolston Field, Wilts. [12] A somewhat similar specimen, with the sides faceted and blunt at one end, has been engraved as having been found in Yorkshire. ”

“ The toothed axe has its edges divided into teeth, fine or coarse according to the work to be done. It is used to reduce the face of limestones and sandstones to a condition ready for the chisel. The bush hammer has a heavy square-shaped double-faced head, upon which are cut projecting pyramidal points. It is used to form a surface full of little holes, and with it the face of sand and limestones may be brought to a somewhat ornamental finish. The patent hammer is used on granite and other hard rocks, which have been first dressed to a medium surface with the point. ”

“ In such cases, the workmen acquire great skill and expedition in the manufacture. A tilt hammer is often used in forging large masses of iron, and even in making utensils as small as the hoe, the axe, and the sword; but the hammer which may be employed bears a due proportion in its weight to the mass of iron to be wrought. In all cases in which a tilt hammer is used, the bellows from which the blast proceeds is moved by water or steam power. ”

“ Spear and arrow-heads could be flaked with the most delicate precision, with no such liability to fracture as leads to constant failure in any attempt to chip even the larger and ruder spear or axe-heads into shape. The hammer-stone only suffices for the earlier processes, including the detachment of the flake from the rough flint nodule, and trimming it roughly into the required form, preparatory to the delicate manipulation of edging, pointing, and notching the arrow-head. ”

“ The anvil-stock was afterwards surrounded by a filling-in of masonry composed of rag-stones and a mortar made of cement and hydraulic lime. This masonry also forms the foundation for the standards of the hammer, and is capped with dressed stone to receive the bed-plates.
The Power-Hammer (Figs. A and B) .--The power-hammer, properly so-called, consists, in addition to the hammer-head, of two standards to whose inner sides are bolted guides upon which slides the moving mass. The bed-plates of cast iron are 28 inches thick, and are independent of the anvil-stock. ”

“ Hammer brought to our hut the red piece, which surely was not of the rock itself, and much we considered of what it might be and of what use it could be made to us. That last thought took but little time. Hammer decided it:
“It will not break,” he said; “it will only bend, and that not easily, yet it may be hammered into many shapes. Such hammering it shall have. I will make a spear-head such as men have never seen!” He took the fragment of metal and one of the heaviest of our stone hammers and went with them to the hard flat boulder in the ravine and there began his pounding. ”

“ Fig. 159.—Flint-bladed reamers.
Hammers.—
At the present day nearly every man has been able to procure an iron hammer of some kind, which he uses with great handiness. Before the introduction of iron, in addition to the bone and stone mauls above described as bone crushers, unhafted pebbles of convenient shape were also employed. No. 56661 [274] is such a stone. It is an ovoid water-worn pebble of greenish gray quartzite, 31⁄2 inches long. The ends are battered, showing how it had been used. It was brought from one of the rivers in the interior by one of the natives of Utkiavwĭñ. ”

“ The face of the stone hammer is brought to bear a slight distance only within the margin of the flake, and, however sharp the blow administered, the smooth block of stone on which the flake is placed, and which of course projects beyond it, acts as a stop to prevent the hammer being carried forward so as to injure the form, and brings it up sharply, directly it has done its work of striking off a splinter from the end of the flake. ”

“ The heaviest I possess weighs only five ounces, and the lightest less than half that weight. As will subsequently be seen, it is possible that some of these instruments were of the nature of anvils rather than of hammers, but for the present it will be most convenient to speak of them under the latter name.
The most common form of hammer is that which is shown in Fig. 210, from an original in the British Museum found at Thorndon, [630] Suffolk, in company with a spear-head, socketed gouge, socketed knife, and two socketed celts. ”

“ In Ireland, perforated hammer-stones are much more abundant than in England. They are usually formed of some igneous or metamorphic rock, and vary considerably in size, some being as much as 10 or 12 inches in length. Sir W. Wilde observes that stone hammers, and not unfrequently stone anvils, have been employed by smiths and tinkers in some of the remote country districts until a comparatively recent period. ”

“ This enormous mass is balanced in space at the will of one man, who, by means of a lever, opens and closes two valves without the least effort. This colossal hammer required an anvil worthy of it. This weighs 720 tons, and rests upon granite in the center of 196 feet of masonry.
The hammer is surrounded with four furnaces heated by gas, and duty is done for each of these by steam cranes capable of lifting 350,000 pounds. These cranes take the glowing block from the furnace, place it upon the anvil, and turn it over on every side at the will of the foreman. ”

“ His hammer is a tool of immense power and pliancy, but for which we must have stopped short in many of those gigantic engineering works which are among the marvels of the age we live in. It possesses so much precision and delicacy that it will chip the end of an egg resting in a glass on the anvil without breaking it, while it delivers a blow of ten tons with such a force as to be felt shaking the parish. ”

“ Later, when they learned that by breaking, pounding and pecking, they could change the shape and form of other stones, in making tools, the Hammer Stone was once more their servant. It was used by primitive peoples the world over, including of course the Mound-builders and the Indians. From the humble Hammer Stone, as a beginning, we may trace without a break all the inventions and progress that man has made, from the very earliest times up to the present. Therefore the Hammer Stone may be rightly called the father of civilization. ”

“ A larger stone serves the purpose of an anvil, and a smaller stone does duty for a hammer. Sometimes the hammer is made of a conical piece of iron, but in most cases a stone is considered sufficient. The rough work of hammering the iron into shape is generally done by the chief blacksmith’s assistants, of whom he has several, all of whom will pound away at the iron in regular succession. The shaping and finishing the article is reserved by the smith for himself. The other tools are few and simple, and consist of punches and rude pincers made of two rods of iron. ”

“ The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an ordinary eye. ”